No long line of voters in Pointe Aux Barques

WALT RUMMEL

Published 8:00 pm, Sunday, October 24, 2004

Those election day problems won't be occurring at the northern tip of Michigan's Thumb, though, in Pointe Aux Barques, Huron County, called the smallest voter precinct in Michigan and one of the smallest in the nation's 50 states.

They'll have the desks, and voting booths, and ballot boxes set up in the township hall, and, as Township Supervisor Cal Purdy says, "with three certified election watchers." There are 22 registered voters in the township, and 17 are voting as absentees, as they live in other locations away from Huron County. Cal has been supervisor for the past 11 years, succeeding the late Pearson Smith. Other township officers are Anne Milligan, clerk; Helen Gilbride, treasurer; Donald Green and Peter Smith, trustees; Dan Pratt, constable and Joanne Babcock, assistant treasurer.

It's different in 2004

than it was in 1972

In the presidential election of 1972 it was this writer's opportunity to visit Pointe Aux Barques and view the voting on election day.

That was 32 years ago - eight presidential elections ago - when George McGovern ran for president on the Democratic ticket against Richard M. Nixon, Republican. That was a walk-away for President Nixon, giving him his second term, which ended a short two years later with the first-ever resignation of a sitting president.

The 1972 Nixon victory was reflected here in Michigan, where the president received almost two million votes, 1,961,721 against McGovern's 1,459,435, for a 56.2 percent Nixon total against the loser's 41.1 percent. Other winners on the ballot were Gov. William Milliken, Sen. Robert P. Griffin, both Republicans, and 8th District U.S. Congressman Bob Traxler, Democrat.

How it was in Pointe Aux Barques in 1972

Thirty-two years ago Ted H. Schubel was supervisor, and his wife, Alberta, was township clerk. In a township of 10 registered voters they didn't need a hall set aside for voting, so balloting was in the home of Joe and Nora Reimann, treasurer and trustee respectively. They were candidates for re-election, and Elmer Stine was running to fill a trustee vacancy. Thus, five of the township's 10 registered voters were candidates for offices. That old Reimann home had a historic background, as it was the community boarding house around the turn of the century when the Pointe was one of the grandest resort places in the Midwest, accessible by puffing locomotives.

Ted Schubel, the longtime supervisor, explained that "all we do is move in a table and chairs, and then get some pencils." They didn't need to check their register because they knew the entire list of registered voters by heart. "But we're very particular that everything is done correctly," he emphasized. Four or five signatures on a nominating petition were sufficient, he added.

On election day there was no voting booth, but there was a hall at the end of the room, Schubel explained, in a completely private area. So, after receiving his ballot, the voter stepped into the hall, marked his preferences, and brought the sheet back.

Mrs. Reimann served coffee and donuts to the election board, the voters and to the writer/photographer.

By 9 a.m. all registered voters had cast their ballots, and the board knew there wouldn't be any more voters coming - they'd all been there or sent in their absentee ballots.

By 1972 the state elections board had laid down new rules for small voting precincts such as the Pointe. For years before, as soon as all absentee ballots and the newly-cast local ballots had been tabulated - sometimes as early as 9 a.m. - a news correspondent for the wire service in Bad Axe, 20 miles to the south, called in to get the results. The reporter phoned the figures to the afternoon newspaper and radio news programs, and the returns became public information. The early results had become a tradition, Schubel explained, and soon news agencies all over the country were contacting and reporting on Pointe Aux Barques' results. One year Huntley-Brinkley gave the first reports, then Walter Cronkite, and for one shining day every four years the name "Pointe Aux Barques" was heard all around the country.

At one time the 840-acre near-mythical kingdom was solidly Republican and naturally there were objections from Democrats who heard "100 percent GOP vote" on radio and saw it in the daily newspapers long before the polls closed at 8 p.m. Rumors were that they issued complaints in Lansing, and the State Election Commission ordered local boards to stay open until 8 p.m., the legal closing time across the state.

When the late Gov. G. Mennen Williams was a candidate for his six terms he always received some votes, Schubel recalled, adding that Mrs. Williams had lived on the Pointe as a girl, so she and her family were well-known in the colony.

Ted Schubel, passed on in 1986, and his wife, former clerk Alberta Schubel, died three years ago on Oct. 23, 2001.

Pointe Aux Barques received its name in the days of French fur traders who said the rocky barrier standing against the pounding waters of Lake Huron and Saginaw Bay, resembled the prow of a ship. A government survey in 1833 called it "a rough, rocky, small-caverned cape." It was developed into one of the finest summer colonies in Michigan, begun in 1896, when a Pere Marquette railroad official recommended that the company sell the Tip-of-the-Thumb land to Detroit socialites for a summer place. Twice daily, during summer, a train arrived from Detroit, stopping at the private station, which later became the golf house. A special train, labeled "Flyer," arrived early Friday evening after stopping only at Port Huron, and departed again early Sunday, for the convenience of working husbands whose families summered at their elegant resort home "in Pointe Aux Barques."